Soul Food: William Drabble on blackberry and apple crumble

The chef recalls crumbles made with home-grown apples, pears and blackberries

When I was about nine we lived in a cottage that felt as though it was in the middle of nowhere. It was actually about 12 miles outside Norwich, in a very agricultural area. Everyone grew so much produce that they’d put boxes of it outside their houses, piled high with what they had just pulled out of the ground, for people to take it off their hands. You could walk out of the house and have done your shopping before you reached the end of the road. The flavours were amazing. I picked delicious cherries on my way to school, and you could go into a field and pinch an ear of sweetcorn to cook and eat with butter.

We grew blackberries and apples and my grandparents had pear trees, so crumble pies were the puddings of my childhood, baked by my mum and grandmother. My grandmother had been a cook for Earl Fitzwilliam in Yorkshire. She used to tell me about the old days of service, painting a wonderful picture of the game left to hang in the trees to tenderise and the vegetables dug from the garden.

I have apple trees in my own garden in Wandsworth now, and my daughter loves to pick from them and say, “Let’s go and bake something, Dad!”